CEIBS Hosts Executive Forum with Henkel’s Kathrin Menges

August 16, 2017. Shanghai – The importance of diversity in the workplace was a focus of a lecture by Henkel Executive Vice President, Human Resources and Infrastructure Services Ms. Kathrin Menges at an Executive Forum held today at CEIBS Shanghai Campus.

Headquartered in Germany, Henkel employs a workforce from 120 nations in locations across more than 75 countries — more than 80% based outside of Germany, with more than half in emerging markets. Ms. Menges explained that the multinational considers diversity such an important part of the company’s success that it is among the KPI goals used to measure team performance. She also shared some of the company’s other initiatives in this area, such as its ‘global diversity weeks’.

Ms. Menges said that employee work-life balance is also important to the company and that in some ways it has come naturally to this family enterprise, which has a strong entrepreneurial spirit. Its relative openness to innovation and new ideas has meant that the introduction of flexible working hours and even flexible office space was not hard to sell to company leaders, as they believe that it doesn’t matter where you do your work as long as the job gets done.

In her lecture she also shared some of the ways that Henkel is trying to attract and develop its future leaders. The Forum attracted more than 100 people, and the enthusiastic audience peppered Ms. Menges with questions at the conclusion of her lecture.